Edward Dutton: Making Sense of Race By Brian Simpson

For the present ruling ideology that holds, inconsistently, that races do not exist, but still supports racial vilification laws loosely defined, and extraordinary affirmative action programs for non-whites, the book by Edward Dutton, Making Sense of Race (Washington Summit, 2020), is the antidote.

https://vdare.com/writers/edward-dutton.

Dutton defends the old school, but sound definition of race as a human sub-species, with the races differing in genotypic frequencies, which can be empirically ascertained, and about which predictions can be made and tested empirically, making the concept of race as scientific as any other concept in science. In reality there is vagueness about almost all categories depicted via natural languages, something well-known in philosophy, such as in the paradox of the sorites:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

So, mere vague boundaries between sub-races, itself causally explicable by miscegenation, does not show that sub-races, or races do not exist, any more than the lack of sharp boundaries between colours, shows that nothing can be coloured.

Dutton’s book carries the race argument much further than most texts that have given a mild defence of the race concept, examining the health consequences of race differences, such as disease prevalence in Covid-19, which should be highly relevant to the present regime. Thus, people needing donor organs, tend to require them from the same race, or sub-race. Consequently, race differences, even relating to skin colour, dismissed as unimportant by racial nihilists and manic liberals, can have health ramifications, and rather than race differences promoting hate, recognition of such differences could help save lives.

It was good to see Dutton zero in and destroy for all time the Lewontin argument, something I have been chipping away at for many articles, that there are more differences within races, than between them. This non-sequitur and piece of sophistry was devised using genetic loci that indeed do not differ much between races, so garbage in, garbage out. Simply examine genetic loci that do differ between races significantly, and you get a different result. So, as Dutton points out, the Lewontin argument is logically circular, and also question begging.

What about the trendy idea that races are mere “social constructions,” an idea beloved of left-wing sociology, which is today, most of sociology? The refutation is via empirical scientific inquiry. Thus, the bushman women have large secondary sexual characteristics, such as large breasts and buttocks, but also labia hanging dramatically, many inches between their legs. Dutton hypothesises that these secondary sexual characteristics are genetic advertisements of fitness, showing that individuals have resources left over to grow such features. These physical differences are quite inconsistent with the social construction view. Of course, the really crazy social constructionist will say that even the physical is social, but the argument should be turned around, and the social reduced back to the physical and biological.

The book has numerous taboo-breaking discussions, including race differences in intelligence (where I have the most disagreement), religiousness, ethnocentrism and personality. A direct challenge to the establishment, is his discussion of mixed race relationships, which he shows are much rarer than the media depictions would have us believe, because, from a sociobiological position, people tend to maximise the passing on of their genes, so, they will tend to mate with people similar to themselves. It is true that he does see greater levels of miscegenation in America today, than in the 1960s:

https://www.amren.com/commentary/2020/12/miscegenation-in-america-edward-dutton/

However: “A situation like this will not render race “irrelevant” so much as it will generate a new people – or, more likely, peoples. We shouldn’t expect Peoria, Illinois, to resemble Silicon Valley anytime soon; however, the dramatic transformation that America is currently undergoing will unquestionably transform its collective feeling of nationalism – and xenophobia – in the not-too-distant future.” Thus, as America breaks down, and the social glue of affluence and consumerism, which has held this sorry mess together in a fashion, no longer exists, conflict will be universal, as it has in all ethno-racially diverse societies.